Vacuums Suck
August 31st, 2006 - 5:05 pm
I am apparently never supposed to have a fully-functional vacuum cleaner in my home. I did some sweeping and dusting, and then set about to vacuum the couches and living room floor/rug. I put on the upholstery attachment, turn on the vacuum, and no less than ten seconds later, I smell smoke … smoke which is billowing out of the vacuum cleaner. I turn it off and open the area where the brush and belt is and there lays the belt broken and melted. No idea what caused it either. The brush didn’t have any hair on it or anything else that would make it stick, and it spins freely. Yuck … what a smell too. Burning rubber is NASTY!
I always thought the old one ate belts because it was old, we couldn’t get exactly the right belt, and so we had to “make” a newer one work. Now I am wondering if all vacuum cleaners with belts need to have them replaced often. So yet again, I have a vacuum cleaner that seems to like eating belts. Is this common? Should I always have several spares on hand, because I’m going to need one every few months (or less)? If that’s true, how annoying. 
At the moment, I have spot cleaner sitting on a stain that I don’t think is going to come out no matter what I do. I have to give it a try all the same. I’d just turn the couch cushion over, but there’s a stain on the other side too. There comes an age when couches just need to be replaced or recovered, and ours passed that many moons ago. These were Lin’s first new living room set, so use your imagination on how old they must be. Even I don’t know their true age. Old … that’s all I know. I was probably still in high school when he first sat on them.
Now there’s a crimp in my whole floor-cleaning plan. At least I can still do the furniture and get the dusty bunnies out of the dark corners, but I really wanted to do the rugs today too. Maybe I’ll get out the old vacuum cleaner and see if it wants to work one more time for me. Let’s see how many vacuum cleaner belts I can do through in one day! 
Good thing we are going to Sears this weekend to look at some tools that are on sale. That’s where the vacuum cleaner came from, so hopefully they’ll have the belts for it. I’m getting two. I hate when I’m in the middle of something and have to stop due to something breaking and there being no replacement. It messes with my workflow.
Oh well … back to getting that stain out, and then I guess I’ll just vacuum what I can. The weekend is almost here, and I can do the rugs then. I’m really annoyed about this though. Vacuum cleaners and I just don’t get along.
2 Responses to “Vacuums Suck”
Since it didn’t burn because of hair, it had to be something that stopped the brush bar while the motor continued to try to drive the belt. On my old Hoover Concept One the nap height linkage adjustment is damaged and sometimes slips down to its lowest level, which causes it to have almost zero clearance and forces the bristles right against the carpet. I smell rubber immediately when that happens; also, the drive assist fails and it’s hard to push. In the past, whenever I saw belts or bags in the throw-away bin, I’d grab them. Of course, I now have too many.
I just remembered: when you remove the brush assembly to replace the belt, remove the axle shaft and make sure hair isn’t where you can’t see it. Hair absorbs the grease that should be on the axle shaft. Clean the shaft and inside the brush with rubbing alcohol and regrease it with petroleum jelly. Just because it spins in your hand doesn’t mean it will while under load.
I opened the thing up and inspected everything last night, and all I can say is … poor engineering design and shoddy manufacturing with cheap plastics. It supposedly has “self-adjusting” nap height, and apparently it always wants to adjust to the lowest setting. Unfortunately, at the lowest setting, the built-in plastic bracket that holds the belt and brush in place rubbed against the brush. This caused the plastic to melt, most likely the last time I used it (vacuumed the whole house in one go that day), and when I put it away, said melted plastic bonded to the brush. Thus, when I turned it on yesterday, the belt immediately burnt through because the bracket and brush were one non-moving mass.
I’m peeved. It’s not like it was an expensive vacuum, though not cheap either, but one would hope that when spending $100 on something and only using it once a week for a few months (I don’t vacuum every day), it wouldn’t be designed and built so poorly that it breaks after what … about 25 or so uses.
I’m going to see if it’s still under warranty (doubt it), but it’s going to require the use of a Dremil tool and some re-engineering before it works again. I will, at least, be writing the manufacturer and complaining.
If only my ancient 1960’s Hoover had the hose attachments and didn’t weigh a million pounds. That thing works great, though it goes through belts pretty quickly too.